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Cooking the Gun Homicide Numbers at the NYT (All the propaganda that's fit for the gullible)
American Thinker ^
| 91/24/2011
| Peter Wilson
Posted on 01/24/2011 11:05:33 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In his New York Times column "
Obama's Gun Play," Charles M. Blow lays out a familiar but inaccurate talking point: we need increased gun control laws because the United States is the murder capital of the planet. Mr. Blow writes:
[T]he U.S. is in a league of its own, and not in a good way. We have nearly 9 guns for every 10 people, and about 9 out of every 10 of our homicides are committed with one of those guns. No other country even comes close.
A column is accompanied by a large graphic which illustrates American gun violence as an enormous ball by itself way up at the top, while a dozen other tiny spheres representing OECD countries are clustered at the bottom.
New York Times readers, however, ought to hesitate before scurrying to speed-dial their Congress reptiles and demand an end to this preventable epidemic of gun ownership. To begin with, that repeated phrase "9 out of 10" has a euphonious ring, but Blow's data is simply inaccurate. I was unable to find any U.S. homicide statistics in the source cited, the United Nations Small Arms Survey, which for the most part discusses the proliferation of guns in places like Timor and Yemen. According to the
Department of Justice, the percentage of homicides for guns in the U.S since 1977 has risen slightly from 62% to 68% -- less than seven out of ten, not nine out of ten.
More importantly, although these figures may be interesting for certain analyses, they don't tell us much about societal violence. Incredibly, Blow never addresses the obvious relevant figure: the overall homicide rate. He is able to claim that the U.S. is in "a league of its own," with a country sphere at the top of the chart, only by basing his analysis on an irrelevant statistic -- "percent of homicides by firearms." A homicide is a homicide, whether it's done with a Glock or a garden hose. In the U.S., sharp instruments -- e.g., knives -- are the second-most popular murder weapon. They have dropped from around 20% to 12% of the total. For comparison, in Canada, guns and knives both account for around 34% of the total murders. In
England and Wales, where guns are strictly controlled, 28% of homicides are committed with a knife and only 6% with a firearm. British gun murders in some years rank below death by blunt object, kicking, and strangulation. But so what? During the Rwandan genocide, the gun homicide rate was extremely low, given the preference of Hutus for death by machete. Is the percentage of homicides by kicking any less indicative of violence? Homicidal people seem to find the means necessary, and if nothing else is available, strangulation with one's bare hands is quite effective.
A second statistic presented in the New York Times chart repeats this same distortion. The circles representing countries are "sized relative to firearm homicides per capita" rather than overall homicide rates. Thus, the country sphere for the U.S., with an overall homicide rate of 5.0 per 100,000, is much larger than Mexico's, which has 15.0 homicides per 100,000, or triple that of the U.S. The country sphere for Turkey is miniscule despite Turkey's homicide rate of 6.9, 28% higher than that of the U.S. Turks and Mexicans apparently find ways to kill each other without using guns. In the case of the Mexican drug gangs, beheadings are trending upward.
Blow also selects only OECD, which are thirty wealthy countries with relatively low crime rates countries for his data. OECD members Mexico and Turkey, as mentioned, have higher homicide rates than ours, and when we look at the world as a whole, the U.S. ranks 45th, below El Salvador (71 murders per 100,000, or 14 times the U.S. rate), Honduras (67), Jamaica (58), Guatemala (52), etc.
In addition, Blow chooses data from 2005, although 2009 data is readily available. In this 2005-2009 period, the U.S. homicide rate dropped by 11%, from 5.6 to 5.0 -- with a one-year drop of 8% from 2008 to 2009 -- while Mexico's murder rate rose by 36%, from 11.0 in 2005 to 15.0 in 2009. None of these trends holds any interest for Mr. Blow since they don't fit with his pre-established paradigm that increased gun ownership leads to increased homicide.
Mr. Blow, who is black, unfortunately injects race into his plea for gun control, noting that "gun owners are almost twice as likely to be white as nonwhite, are more than three times as likely to be male as female and are more likely to live in the South and Midwest than in the East or West."
Once again, Blow uses what appear to be statistical facts -- "three times as likely," etc. -- to make a point about gun violence. One might ask, however, if white Southern redneck guys own a lot of guns, then why is the homicide rate for American blacks, according to Department of Justice
statistics, thirteen times that of whites? The 2005 figures are 3.5 homicide offenders per 100,000 for whites and 26.5 for blacks. For black males in the 18-24 age group, the
figure is -- tragically for their predominantly black victims -- 203.3 per 100,000, or 58 times that of the overall white population. These enormous disparities among groups clearly cannot be explained by gun ownership.
It is true that the American murder rate is much higher than that of any country in Western Europe. Finland has the highest rate, 2.2, while neighboring Norway has the lowest of 0.6. Should we strive to lower our murder rates to European levels? Of course we should. But singling out irrelevant and inaccurate statistics about gun homicides and gun ownership to make America look more violent in order to argue for greater controls on guns does not help the debate.
Gullible New York Times readers are likely to be bamboozled by such deceptive statistical games, but Blow's propaganda cannot withstand serious scrutiny.
TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: banglist; gun; guncontrol; lies; newyorktimes; propaganda; times
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To: SeekAndFind
To: SeekAndFind
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3
posted on
01/24/2011 11:15:55 AM PST
by
Joe Brower
(Sheep have three speeds: "graze", "stampede" and "cower".)
To: SeekAndFind
If the homicides committed and sustained among a specific 12% of the US population were excluded from US homicide statistics, they wouldn’t look much different from England or Germany’s.
4
posted on
01/24/2011 11:24:35 AM PST
by
wideawake
To: wideawake
RE: If the homicides committed and sustained among a specific 12% of the US population were excluded
I’d really be interested to know this — of this 12% homicide demographic, how many percent of this is gun related?
To: SeekAndFind
Id really be interested to know this of this 12% homicide demographic, how many percent of this is gun related? Nearly all of it I'd guess.
6
posted on
01/24/2011 11:31:21 AM PST
by
Lurker
(The avalanche has begun. The pebbles no longer have a vote.)
To: Lurker
RE: Nearly all of it I’d guess.
OK, the next interesting question -— how many percent of these gun related homicide in the black community came as result of the assailant using LEGAL vs ILLEGAL guns.
This data is quite important because gun control advocates always argue that if you BANNED gun ownership outright, you would have little or almost no gun related crimes in the USA.
To: SeekAndFind
And here is the core driver of the gun control movement from the 90's to today:
"gun owners are almost twice as likely to be white as nonwhite, are more than three times as likely to be male as female and are more likely to live in the South and Midwest than in the East or West."
And
" the homicide rate for American blacks, according to Department of Justice statistics, thirteen times that of whites?
Boiled down, I think, it's this: the left/liberal cabal that have controled social policy for forty years have no honest answer why all of their "remedies" have lead to misery, violence, death and despair, which is nowher more starkly obvious than in the homicide rates among young black males. They must then grasp at straws, and the instrumentality, the gun, provides an emotionally satisfying scapegoat. And what is better, not only do they not have to take ownership of their own failures, they simultaneously punish their hated "other": the middle-aged, white, Southern male.
They aren't stupid. They know that "gun control" will do nothing to stop the carnage and chaos in the cities, they do not in fact want that social morass remediated. They make their livings, after all, drawing from the taxpayer's sense of guilt, proposing newer and ever-more futile programs, necessitated by the collapse of the black family that they themselves precipitated.
8
posted on
01/24/2011 11:40:30 AM PST
by
absalom01
(You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.)
To: absalom01
I remember seeing (can’t find the reference right now, but will go look if needed) some statistics to the effect that if the black male teenage gun homicide rate were removed from US statistics, the male, teenage, gun homicide rate would be about the same as that of Switzerland.
And yes, I deliberately used the word “black”. This has nothing to do with race, but rather with social experimentation (see the recent column by Walter Williams in the WSJ).
The real tragedy is that the vast majority of those murder victims are black.
It brings to mind the comment made by a politician after passage of the 1968 gun law that “This law was not passed to control guns, but to control blacks”.
(Remember, this was immediately following the massive inner city riots of the 60’s)
To: SeekAndFind
Is his name really Blow? Only a lib would keep such a name & be proud of it. If I were him I would change it to Owlb.
To: SeekAndFind
Ya ya ya...
guns are bad, and white, male gun owners doubly so.
racist sphincter that guy that blows is...
what that? his name is “blow”? oh...
My previous statement stands.
11
posted on
01/24/2011 12:08:22 PM PST
by
four more in O 4
(God loves us, he gave us: November 2nd 2010.)
To: SeekAndFind
It is true that the American murder rate is much higher than that of any country in Western Europe. Finland has the highest rate, 2.2, while neighboring Norway has the lowest of 0.6. Should we strive to lower our murder rates to European levels? Of course we should.Not so fast! Those statistics may be homicide statistics rather than murder, representing any time one human kills another. If so, the excess American deaths may be defensive killings of predators. It could be that Europeans are simply trading the ability to defend themselves for better statistics. Not a good trade.
12
posted on
01/24/2011 12:34:15 PM PST
by
Still Thinking
(Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
To: SeekAndFind
So the article was written by some guy by name of C.M. Blow?
That’s clever.
13
posted on
01/24/2011 12:43:17 PM PST
by
Vendome
(Don't take life so seriously..... You won't live through it anyway.)
To: wideawake
If the homicides committed and sustained among a specific 12% of the US population were excluded from US homicide statistics, they wouldnt look much different from England or Germanys. This is a variation on the "Vermont Adjustment". Take any statistic you want to compare with the world and then give it the "Vermont Adjustment" and we always win hands down.
Heck, give America's budget woes the "Vermont Adjustment", and we wouldn't really be in that bad a shape.
And you can't fix a problem unless you diagnose it properly.
14
posted on
01/24/2011 12:48:29 PM PST
by
triumphant values
(Never criticize that to your right.)
To: SeekAndFind
They are obsessed with gun homicides. Other homicides are irrelevant to them.
The gun is the only thing standing between leftists and absolute power.
15
posted on
01/24/2011 1:17:08 PM PST
by
Soothesayer
(smallpox is not a person)
To: SeekAndFind
?Mr. Blow, who is black, unfortunately injects race into his plea for gun control, noting that “gun owners are almost twice as likely to be white as nonwhite, are more than three times as likely to be male as female and are more likely to live in the South and Midwest than in the East or West.”
Whites having guns make black men kill each other?
16
posted on
01/24/2011 2:05:12 PM PST
by
TASMANIANRED
(Liberals are educated above their level of intelligence.. Thanks Sr. Angelica)
To: Sigurdrifta
The best source that I know of on the web is a web front-end to the CDC database, here:
http://webappa.cdc.gov/cgi-bin/broker.exe
If you look at the following extract: Males, non-hispanic, age 14-24, you get the results you reference in your post. Looks like this:
Race |
Number of |
Population |
Crude |
Deaths |
Rate |
White |
665 |
14,825,623 |
4.49 |
Black |
2,907 |
3,623,796 |
80.22 |
Am Indian/AK Native |
41 |
253,503 |
16.17 |
Asian/Pac Islander |
69 |
1,059,597 |
6.51 |
Total |
3,682 |
19,762,519 |
18.63 |
You can re-phrase these results in a lot of interesting ways. One is to observe that black teenage males suffer a homicide rate roughly 18 times greater than their white counterparts. Another way to look at it is to note that of the 3600 homicides recored in that age group in 2007, close to 80% were suffered by blacks. One can, to a first approximation, say accurately that the murder problem in the United States is today, and has been for some time, a problem of young black males killing each other. That's the problem the left can't have us looking at.
17
posted on
01/24/2011 2:30:35 PM PST
by
absalom01
(You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more, you should never wish to do less.)
To: absalom01
That's the problem the left can't have us looking at. Because it would be..."racist"...
18
posted on
01/24/2011 2:44:50 PM PST
by
okie01
(THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: Ignorance On Parade)
To: absalom01
--and some of the northern tier states (North and South Dakota, for example) have homicide rates equal to or less than some of the European countries held up as examples of "gun control" , in spite of very high rates of gun ownership--
--the difference--no young black population to speak of---
19
posted on
01/24/2011 3:06:28 PM PST
by
rellimpank
(--don't believe anything the media or government says about firearms or explosives--)
To: SeekAndFind
Gullible New York Times readers are likely to be bamboozled by such deceptive statistical games, but Blow's propaganda cannot withstand serious scrutiny. Not only that, but serious politicians know that any attempt at door-to-door gun confiscation ala 'Great' Britain will start a full-scale civil war in the US, with probable carnage in the hundreds of thousands or more.
20
posted on
01/24/2011 3:08:38 PM PST
by
backwoods-engineer
(The future? Imagine Cass Sunstein's boot stamping on Lincoln's beard, forever.)
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